Matomo is the veteran of privacy-friendly analytics: open source, self-hostable, packed with features. We respect it. But "you own everything" also means you run everything - the server, the database, the upgrades, the plugins - and the experience is closer to Google Analytics than to the lightweight tools people are switching to. Here is the honest trade-off.
Not the licence - the time, the weight and the add-ons.
A PHP application with a MySQL database, an archiving cron, security updates and plugin compatibility to babysit. It runs fine - as long as someone keeps running it. That someone is you.
Raw tracking tables balloon with every pageview. Busy sites end up tuning archiving jobs and pruning old data to keep reports loading. Corbacount pre-aggregates nightly, so dashboards stay fast no matter how much history piles up.
matomo.js weighs in around 20 KB+ transferred in typical deployments (estimate) - several times the size of our 2.2 KB gzipped (7.3 KB raw) snippet - and grows further with plugins like heatmaps. Every visitor pays that cost on your page.
Out of the box Matomo sets tracking cookies, which in the EU usually means a consent banner. A cookieless mode exists, but you have to know about it, configure it and accept the accuracy trade-off it brings.
The headline features beyond core analytics - funnels, heatmaps and session recording, A/B testing, search keyword performance - are premium plugins on self-hosted Matomo, each with its own yearly price tag.
Dozens of report sections, settings pages and plugin screens. If you left Google Analytics because of the maze, Matomo will feel familiar in the wrong way. Power is there, but so is the learning curve.
The depth you actually use, managed for you, at one flat price.
No server, no updates, no archiving cron, no database to prune. We run it in Germany under the GDPR; you read your stats.
One async snippet of 2.2 KB gzipped (7.3 KB raw) using sendBeacon that never blocks your page - Web Vitals, realtime and goals included, no plugin payloads stacking up.
Stats are pre-aggregated nightly into compact tables, so a dashboard over three years of data loads as fast as week one.
Goals, funnels, visitor paths, realtime, Core Web Vitals, SEO rankings, backlinks and Search Console - in the base price, not a plugin store.
Like Matomo's visit log, you can follow individual journeys - stored first-party, EU-hosted and visible only to you.
Compare: Matomo Cloud starts around €22/month, and self-hosting is "free" plus your server plus your time plus the plugins.
| Matomo | Corbacount | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source / self-hostable | Yes | No - managed only |
| Maintenance required | Server, updates, cron, database | None - fully managed |
| Tracker script | ~20 KB+ (estimate, grows with plugins) | 2.2 KB gzipped (7.3 KB raw), async, never blocks the page |
| Cookies | Tracking cookies by default (cookieless configurable) | One first-party cookie, nothing third-party |
| Individual visitor paths | Yes (visit log) | Yes, first-party and private |
| Realtime view | Yes | Yes, live per-visitor (2-min presence) |
| Funnels | Paid plugin (self-hosted) | Included |
| Heatmaps & session recording | Yes (paid plugin) | No - not our focus |
| Core Web Vitals (LCP/INP/CLS) | Paid plugin | Built-in, from real visitors |
| SEO keywords & backlinks | Keywords via paid plugin, no backlinks | Rankings, backlinks, domain health + GSC |
| Dashboard speed on years of data | Depends on your server & archiving | Pre-aggregated, always fast |
| Ask your own AI questions (MCP) | No | Yes, via the MCP server |
| Price for one site | Self-hosted: free + server + plugins; Cloud from ~€22/month | €4/month, flat |
Matomo details and pricing as published at the time of writing - check matomo.org for their current offer. We aim to keep this fair; tell us if something is outdated. Last checked: 12 June 2026.
When your policy demands that analytics data never leaves your own servers, or when you need heatmaps and session recordings in the same tool. If that is your situation, self-hosted Matomo is a legitimate answer and we will happily say so.
No. We focus on privacy-first analytics, SEO and Core Web Vitals. If you need pixel-level heatmaps, run a dedicated tool next to us - the tracker coexists fine.
Every night we aggregate raw pageviews into compact daily, hourly, page, referrer, country, browser and OS tables. The dashboard reads those; only "today" touches raw data. That is also why there is no archiving cron for you to tune - we tuned it once, for everyone.
Yes - add our snippet next to matomo.js, run both for a few weeks and compare. Coming from the other direction? See how we compare to the minimal tools on the Corbacount vs Plausible page, or to the big-tech scripts on the full comparison.
Get on the waitlist for early access and locked-in pricing.
